Taking Control of Crazy –
Preparing Our Hearts to Receive a Miracle (Part 2)
When our kids were little, trying to keep them on task and contained was always a challenge! Having three children under three years old could be likened to raising goats. In many ways, they are similar, and if you have ever ventured into a supermarket with a cart full of toddlers, you will know exactly what I’m talking about! By the time you arrive at the checkout to pay for the empty boxes, because goat number 1 and 2 have already eaten their contents, goat number 3 needs rescuing from the display rack they mounted while your attention was on the other two.
Yes, our little ones had the ability to bring to their knees a sane adult caught off guard in a matter of minutes. However, they were no match for Crazy Mom! Crazy Mom was nothing more than a look in my eye, a twitch of my head and a shrill cackle that originated from watching too many cartoons too early in the morning. Yet the mere mention of Crazy Mom sent our little goats reeling with laughter and focused their attention back on me.
Our thoughts remind me of those toddler moments. If we don’t contain them, they can get wild and crazy pretty quickly! They consume our time, energy and emotions as our feelings begin to follow whatever we have been thinking upon.
Fear
Fear is something that everyone at some point deals with—you can’t help it, right? Wrong. Actually, that’s a lie that is not based in scripture at all, but has become so common in the world today that we can be fooled into thinking that it’s normal. God does not want us to be in fear. 365 times in the Bible He tells us to fear not. That’s one for every day!
“Perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment.” — 1 John 4: 18. There is only one tormentor and that’s the devil.
Fear is nothing more than False Evidence Appearing Real. It’s a deception that draws our focus away from the truth of God’s promises and gets us looking only at what we can see or feel. This is the opposite of faith.
“We walk by faith and not by sight.” — 2 Corinthians 5:7
Faith is our response of trust and confidence in God’s promises, which is what enables us to receive them.
When we were believing for a healing miracle for our daughter, many times we had the opportunity to fear. The doctors negative report, bad test results, constantly dealing with hospitals, medication, pain, exhaustion, balancing the rest of the families needs, financial strain. All of these competed for our time and attention.
Focus on the Word
Somewhere inside of me I knew that I must not allow my mind to go there and entertain anything other than God’s word if we were to win the battle. Thoughts of Hannah dying were always there, but now I realize how important it was that we did not allow ourselves to dwell on them or else they would have carried us places we didn’t want to be.
“As a man thinks in his heart so is he” — Proverbs 23:7
The biggest battle is that crazy fluff between our ears. The good news is that we can change the way we think and take captive those thoughts not from God.
“Casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.” — 2 Corinthians 10:5
Jesus tell us that all things are possible to him who believes, and to only believe. That’s good advice!
Focus on Jesus
Peter was the only recorded man other than Jesus to walk on water. He walked on top of the storm, the circumstances that said it was impossible, the thoughts that told him he was crazy, the whole time that he kept his focus on Jesus. He did not start to sink until he began to look away from Jesus and focus on the size of those circumstances!
Peter had to take control of those crazy thoughts in order to step out of the boat. Fear was real in the moment, but faith overcame it!
I have come to find that the more we step out and believe God for the impossible, the more crazy fluff there is to take captive, but the greater the victory is in the end!
So, keep believing: ya’ll are world overcomers!
Daisy Chains and Dynamite is an excellent teaching that can help you keep those thoughts under control!